Space was an interest of his for about 4 months but he ended up with a space room for about 5 years. This is the before I took when I started dismantling the room. There were planets mounted on boards in planetary order around his room with the name of each planet listed underneath in the silver stripe.

I didn’t start right away on his new room because he kept changing themes. He went from Mario to jungle, and then settled on “The seven layers of the ocean.” room.

We had different ideas about what the room should look like. It’s not that I didn’t let him have some say but I am the one doing the work and my kids have this idea that I can do anything.

Huh.

My thoughts:

I knew I didn’t want the room to be cartoonish. I also knew that I wanted it to be a space that reflected him now and that it could grow with him.

His thoughts:

His original idea was to stripe the walls with the different layer colors. Or he thought I could paint it to look like an aquarium and the ceiling would be his actual room. Ok then.

The colors he originally picked were SPECIFIC to that ocean layer and ranged from black, to grey to aqua.

Besides costing a fortune in paint, the end result would have looked like a mess so I guided him to picking a color palette to work with.

I made a “wave” stencil and used a sand tan color to ground it all.

Then I used 4 colors on the one wall and sort of blended them instead of striping them.

I told him it’s like five layers if you count the ceiling color.

He picked out that ocean fish poster from posters.com.

He loves to collect those plastic sea animals and I used a fishing net to display them on this corner in his room.

I built that shelf to hold all of his ocean books.The map is for marking all the Aquariums we visit in the United States.

That shelf cost less than $15 to make.The rope trim gives it a nautical feel.I painted it grey to match curtains and bedding

I was originally going to make a mobile with these but ended up using these shell xrays above his bed.

He picked two different pillow cases. I got them on Etsy. Narwhal and Octopus (next photo)

When my son was 5 he declared he would be a marine biologist.

I guess some day we’ll see.

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Doing this room took longer than I thought it would. But if I have one piece of advice when it comes to doing a space it’s this: Don’t rush just to get it done. Sometimes building a room takes time to find just the right elements and design features. It’s often when I rush a project that I decide in 6 months I don’t like this or that. By taking your time you’ll end up with a room that you’ll enjoy for longer than a year.

I had an ocean themed room as a kid. It was at the height of all that Free Willy nonsense! My mother bought me an orca windsock that we stuffed and hung over my window as some sort of bizarre window trimming. But I loved it. The room looks wonderful.

SO AWESOME! Where does one even FIND shell x-rays? Only you could do this amazingness. When I move into my own place, you’re helping me reconfigure the stuff I already have (because I’ll have zero decor budget) and make it look cool. I just volunteered you. I will pay you in homemade cakes or pies or lasagnas or whatever you want.

And I’m with you on the “never paint the ceiling dark blue”: we had painted D’s room dark blue back in the day and the ceiling was a medium purple/blue: ugh. That was hard work, getting rid of all trace of that! :)